The IMF’s Christine Lagarde says there has been a lot of talk, and now “it is time for action”.

The Annual Meeting of the IMF-World Bank in Tokyo this week was an opportunity to see how economic recovery could be kick-started. However, the absence of China from the meetings took the wind out of the sails somewhat from the action agenda. When the Asian engine of global growth is not around, it is difficult to know where to start. One indication of how Eurocentric the IMF can be came at Lagarde’s press briefing on Thursday morning when she asked a “Japanese lady” to take the last question. The lady in question happened to be from Hong Kong’s ‘Economic Times’.